ALFA E OMEGA - Marble inscription from the Cemetery of Commodilla (a. 409) - Rome, Lateran Museum.
ALFA E OMEGA (Λ-Ω). - An allegorical formula from the Apocalypse (1:8; 21:6; 22:13), which juxtaposes the first and last letters (the beginning and the end) of the (Greek) alphabet as a divine title: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord, who immediately interprets this as “He who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty (ὁ παντοκράτωρ)” (1:8), “the beginning and the end” (21:6), “the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (22:13). This mysterious title, which indicates totality in being and duration, is explicitly applied in the last two passages (21:6 and 22:13) to Jesus Christ, to whom it is consistently attributed in patristic literature and Christian usage; in the first passage (1:8) it designates God in His eternal infinity, though with an allusion to Jesus (cf. 1:13, 17-18; 2:8).
In the sense of first-last (cf. Ecclus 24:38), later Jews used aleph-tav, the first and last letters of the (Hebrew) alphabet, to denote totality. In the Jalqut Reuben (13th century): “Adam transgressed the entire Law from aleph to tav (fol. 17, 4); Abraham observed the Law from aleph to tav (fol. 48, 4); when God blesses Israel, He does so from aleph to tav (the initial and final letters of Lev. 26:3-13), but when He curses Israel, He does so only from waw to mem (Lev. 26:14-43)” (in J. C. Schoettgen, Horae hebraicae et talm., on Apoc. 1:8). Rabbi Chanina and Resh Lakish (3rd century) give the rose “truth” (alef-tav beyond mem = the midpoint) as “the seal of God.” The Shekinah (“Presence”), that is, God, was designated by the cabalists as aleph-tav (J. Buxtorf, Lexicon chaldaicum talmudicum et rabbinicum, p. 1). But R. H. Charles is mistaken in asserting that the “A and Ω” of the Apocalypse reproduces this Hebrew expression. B. Allo, on the other hand, assigns it a Hellenistic origin, deriving it from pagan formulas (“mysticism of letters”) widespread in Asia Minor, to which St. John gave a Christian meaning.
The metaphorical use of the two extreme letters of the alphabet was known to secular writers: “A” signified preeminence, “the first” (cf. the contemporary Martial, Epigrams, II, 57; V, 26), “A-Ω” totality, “from first to last” (cf. Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV, 7; PG 82, 1136). Thus in Italian “dall'A alla Z” means “everything, from beginning to end” (N. Tommaseo, Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, I, p. 1); “dall'A all'O” occurs in this sense in Dante (Paradiso XXVI, 17; Epistola a Cangrande, 90) and in 14th-century writers (F. Sacchetti, Canzone 298, in Rime, ed. A. Chiari, Bari 1916: “Da l'A a l'O disvaria Marte e Morte”), a clear echo of the reading of the Apocalypse. In form, therefore, A-Ω was a fundamentally intelligible phrase for the learned.
As for the concept, the Apocalypse seems to draw directly on Isa. 41:4; 44:6; 48:12, where God promises redemption by defining Himself as “I am the first and the last” (words with which the Apocalypse explains the formula “A-Ω” in 21:8 and 22:13), as a guarantee of fulfillment (cf. Isa. 43:10-12). The Apocalypse thus seeks to insinuate in the prologue (1:8) and in the conclusion (21:6 and 22:13) that God’s salvific plan will be brought to completion until the end, when the Almighty (1:8) will vanquish His adversaries in the “judgment” of Jesus the Savior and Sovereign, who is the beginning (Ps. 101 [102]:26 and Heb. 1:10; 12:2; John 1:1) and the end (Rom. 10:4). “A-Ω” expresses divine transcendence, in its attributes of infinity, eternity, and universal causality (efficient and final), including within it the economy of Redemption.
Thus does Clement of Alexandria explain it (Stromata, IV, 25; PG 8, 1365): “the circle of all perfections, which revolve and center upon unity.” More fully, Tertullian (De monogamia, 5; PL 2, 935), quoted later by St. Jerome (Adversus Iovinianum, I, 18; PL 23, 247-248) and St. Isidore (Etymologiae, I, 3; PL 82, 76-77): “The Lord has taken to Himself the two letters of Greece, the first and the last, the figures of beginning and end meeting in Himself, so that, just as A rolls on to Ω and Ω in turn is folded back to A, He might show that in Himself is both the course of beginning to end and the return of end to beginning, so that all order, having its end in Him through whom it began, namely the Word of God made flesh, might likewise end as it began.” And Prudentius, Cathemerinon, IX, 11-12 (PL 59, 863): “Alpha and Omega named: He Himself the source and the close / of all that is, was, and shall be hereafter.” Cf. St. Cyprian, Testimonia adversus Iudaeos, II, 1.6.22; III, 100; PL 4, 725, 730, 745, 806; St. Paulinus of Nola, who first attests the use of “A-Ω” in art, Carmina, 19, 645-652; 30, 89-96; PL 61, 546-547, 673; Arethas of Caesarea, on Apoc. 1:8 in J. A. Cramer, Catenae Graecorum Patrum in N. T., VIII, Oxford 1844, pp. 189-190. — On the Gnostic interpretation (A-Ω forms the number 801, equivalent to περιστερά “dove”) of Marcus, disciple of Valentinus, cf. St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I, 14, 6; 15, 1; PG 7, 608, 616-617, and Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, 50; PL 2, 88.